Global warming

[lomiller]

You seem to be missing the point. Again. You can always find a way to set some new record. I don't know how many records 1950 set when it occurred.

I don’t get it. Are you trying to say that no matter how many records are set hurricanes are not becoming stronger & more common as long as there is a single record that wasn’t broken?

The link between warmer water and number and intensity of hurricanes is well established, therefore global warming is expected to make them stronger and more common. Warmer water is not, however, the only factor involved and sometimes natural variability will swamp the trend. Thus no single year can prove or disprove anything. Multi year trends are another matter. What is so hard to understand about this?

Note that although single years can’t prove anything they can serve as examples showing what effects are more common and as a risk management tool for assessing associated costs.

 

[lomiller]

Yep. But these compute the "anomaly" based on an average, thus the first half has a "negative anomaly" (colder) the second half has a "positive anomaly" (hotter).

I'd like for these warmers to definitely state that in their opinion, the natural trend is a line with slope = 0 coming out of a "little ice age". Because that is what all the theory of unusual warming is based on, right?

On the contrary, if one said that the line has should have some positive slope, then granted, some amount of AGW could be overlaid on top of it to get to the actual historical trend line.

Other then wishful thinking what is your basis for assuming there should be a positive slope after the so called little ice age? The planet was cooling after the anomalous warmth of the middle ages. Why would that just stop in its tracks? If anything the temperature record suggests we should have seen further cooling not warming.

 

[mhaze]

Other then wishful thinking what is your basis for assuming there should be a positive slope after the so called little ice age? The planet was cooling after the anomalous warmth of the middle ages. Why would that just stop in its tracks? If anything the temperature record suggests we should have seen further cooling not warming.

It did start to warm after the little ice age. Why should you not presume it is headed to a point similar to the medieval warming period?

On what basis would you presume a "natural" slope, and what would it be?

 

[rockoon]

I don’t get it. Are you trying to say that no matter how many records are set hurricanes are not becoming stronger & more common as long as there is a single record that wasn’t broken?

No, I believe he is saying that simply because a record was broken, that does not justify the drawing of conclusions that so many folks often do.

It becomes a cherry-picking festival.

When dealing with a large soup of stochastic variables and only a short history, it is COMMON for a record high to be broken SOMEWHERE. Record lows too.

To put it as bluntly as possible:

The first year of sampling, 100% of the data sets a record. What conclusions should we draw? We shoudn't draw any, right? What makes year 10 different from year 1 in regards to the information content of a record being broken? How about year 20? Year 50? Year 100?

Then we get into the whole situation where it doesnt set an absolute record, but it sets a recrd for a shorter period than we have data for .. "worst in 20 years" even though we have 100 years of records .. this is even worse than considering the real highest on record ..

If you try to draw a conclusions from a record being set, aside from simply that the record was broken within the period specified, then you are heavily involved in cherry picking and nothing is going to change that.

 

[David Rodale]

No, I believe he is saying that simply because a record was broken, that does not justify the drawing of conclusions that so many folks often do.

It becomes a cherry-picking festival.

When dealing with a large soup of stochastic variables and only a short history, it is COMMON for a record high to be broken SOMEWHERE. Record lows too.

To put it as bluntly as possible:

The first year of sampling, 100% of the data sets a record. What conclusions should we draw? We shoudn't draw any, right? What makes year 10 different from year 1 in regards to the information content of a record being broken? How about year 20? Year 50? Year 100?

Then we get into the whole situation where it doesnt set an absolute record, but it sets a recrd for a shorter period than we have data for .. "worst in 20 years" even though we have 100 years of records .. this is even worse than considering the real highest on record ..

If you try to draw a conclusions from a record being set, aside from simply that the record was broken within the period specified, then you are heavily involved in cherry picking and nothing is going to change that.

This can go back and forth, and around again. One consideration not discussed which few can argue, is the ability of modern weather monitoring technology to detect storms which in prior years was not possible. This is documented in the following article:
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/landsea-eos-may012007.pdf

The Atlantic is the one tropical cyclone basin
that has quantitative records back to the midnineteenth
century for the whole basin (i.e.,
North Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and Gulf
of Mexico) [Jarvinen et al., 1984; Landsea et al.,
2004]. Mann and Emanuel [2006] used this data
set to find a positive correlation between sea
surface temperatures and Atlantic basin tropical
cyclone frequency for the period of 1871–
2005. Likewise, Holland and Webster [2007] analyzed
Atlantic tropical cyclone frequency back
to 1855 and found a doubling of the number of
tropical cyclones over the past 100 years. Both
papers linked these changes directly to anthropogenic
greenhouse warming. However, both
analyses, with no indication of uncertainty or
error bars, presumed that tropical cyclone
counts are complete or nearly complete for the
entire basin going back in time for at least a
century. This article will show that this presumption
is not reasonable and that improved monitoring
in recent years is responsible for most, if
not all, of the observed trend in increasing
frequency of tropical cyclones.

There are other researchers with similar papers, Bill Gray being one, arguably the most notable pioneers in hurricane research.

 

[rockoon]

This can go back and forth, and around again. One consideration not discussed which few can argue, is the ability of modern weather monitoring technology to detect storms which in prior years was not possible. This is documented in the following article:
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/landsea-eos-may012007.pdf

Our very own BobK showed this very thing on the Climate Audit website, complete with an animated GIF which really brings out the selection bias in the record.

He studied this in quite some detail, even writing agorithms to cull the datasets so as to only include storms that actualy made landfall under the presumption that these storms have the least selection bias over the history of the record.

His conclusions are that, of the hurricanes that made landfall, there arent any more now than there were in the past (infact, less of them) and that the average strength now isnt any more powerfull now than it was in the past (infact, less powerfull)

Most of the "peer reviewed" guys seem to make little or no effort to remove selection bias... that is why I giggle every time I see someone trumpet these studies... most people don't know how really lazy their methodology is and how completely inaccurate the study is because of it.

 

[mhaze]

When hurricanes enter the Gulf of Mexico, if it is warmer, they gain more strength than if it is cooler in the Gulf. But note that is a characteristic of an already organized cyclone.

If the Atlantic is warmer, does it follow that we have more intense hurricanes or more of them? A completely different issue. Too bad we may not have good records from the 1930s.

It was recently asserted by NASA than an unusually warm Atlantic current was the cause of the unusually hot 1930s in the US.

 

[mhaze]

mhaze,

Here are some links to text files for monthly northern hemisphere temperature anomalies going back to 1880.
Land
Ocean
Combined

A worthy data set for me to learn the R package with.

 

[a_unique_person]

This can go back and forth, and around again. One consideration not discussed which few can argue, is the ability of modern weather monitoring technology to detect storms which in prior years was not possible. This is documented in the following article:
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/landsea-eos-may012007.pdf


There are other researchers with similar papers, Bill Gray being one, arguably the most notable pioneers in hurricane research.

Realclimate has it's say.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.ph...tions-to-tighter-hurricane-intensitysst-link/

 

[a_unique_person]

Our very own BobK showed this very thing on the Climate Audit website, complete with an animated GIF which really brings out the selection bias in the record.

He studied this in quite some detail, even writing agorithms to cull the datasets so as to only include storms that actualy made landfall under the presumption that these storms have the least selection bias over the history of the record.

His conclusions are that, of the hurricanes that made landfall, there arent any more now than there were in the past (infact, less of them) and that the average strength now isnt any more powerfull now than it was in the past (infact, less powerfull)

Most of the "peer reviewed" guys seem to make little or no effort to remove selection bias... that is why I giggle every time I see someone trumpet these studies... most people don't know how really lazy their methodology is and how completely inaccurate the study is because of it.

You're making that up.

Kevin Trenberth (also in the Fox News piece) made a good point though. The authors of the study used the NCEP reanalysis as the source of their data. A reanalysis is a re-running of the current state-of-the-art weather forecasting model for all the sources of data that were available in the past (i.e. a hindcast of what all the 6 hour weather forecasts would have been if they had used today's model). These projects (and there are two main ones - NCEP and ERA-40) have a problem in that the amount of useful data increases as you go along - most significantly around 1979 when satellite data starts to be significant. So estimates of key quantities are likely to be worse prior to 1979. Not mentioned, but conceivably important is that the NCEP reanalysis is tied in some respects to the radiosonde data, which, as we discussed last year, may have some spurious trends. This doesn't obviously affect the results significantly, but it does suggest that doing the analyses again using the ERA-40 data might be a useful check. So where does that all leave us? Basically, although everyone acknowledges that there are data problems early in the record, it seems clear that there has been a global rise of the most intense hurricanes over the last 30 years and the most obvious explanation is that this is related to the contemporaneous increases in tropical SST in each basin. However, the magnitude of the correlation cannot yet be explained in terms of our basic theoretical understanding, and is significantly stronger than some modelling work has suggested it should be. Possibly the theory needs work (hurricanes are a complicated business!) or there are other factors at play that haven't yet been considered. Since the SST changes are global, and almost certainly tied to greenhouse gas driven global warming, there are the beginnings of a corroborated link between increases in hurricane intensity and GW - however, so far there are only a couple of ducks in a row.

The data is a known problem, and attempts have been made to factor that into the research.

 

[rockoon]

You're making that up.

Even if you searched THIS forum you would know the truth ..

...as a matter of fact you posted on the very thread on this forum where the data was introduced, doing so 3 times.

Hey liar.. got anything of substance to day for yourself?

And I quote one of BobK's posts on this forum:

Here's a count of plots of hurricane force winds from 0-300 miles and 
301-1200 miles from land for 1851-1900 and 1951-2000.

Landfall->    0-300 miles   301-1200 miles
1851-1900     3342 plots    1165 plots
1951-2000     2933 plots    1921 plots

14% more hurricanes within 300 miles of shore between 1851 and 1900 than made between 1951 and 2000 - and we know that there is zero chance that we missed any in the latter period but still a very strong chance that we missed some in the former period.

He states:

I think 1851-1900 was as bad and probably worse than 1951-2000 given the 
disparity in observational quality between the two periods. Unfortunately there 
isn't any way to resolve the observational discrepancy accurately.

In a further post, he states on the specific landfall numbers:

1851-1900 shows 288. 1951-2000 shows 236. It appears it was pretty nasty 
back in the 1800's and the 1950-2000 era wasn't anything exceptional. You 
can even add in the 2001-2006 landfalling plots(43) and not exceed what 1851-1900 had.

The data is a known problem, and attempts have been made to factor that into the research.

I am afraid that what you quoted makes no reference to attempts to factor in the selection bias in the data which goes back over 150 years. These are lazy people doing lazy things and caling it science.

 

[Pipirr]

{snip}Most of the "peer reviewed" guys seem to make little or no effort to remove selection bias... that is why I giggle every time I see someone trumpet these studies... most people don't know how really lazy their methodology is and how completely inaccurate the study is because of it.

No disrespect, rockoon, but peer review remains the best way of evaluating scientific research. It strikes me as improbable that the AGW skeptics' camp (or anyone else) has formulated a better approach.

I don't know Bobk, neither from here nor at Climate Audit, but if the methodological flaws that he has uncovered are real then they are publishable and I encourage him to do so. The arguments over the AGW hypothesis will be won, in the end, in the scholarly journals. That's not to say that we in the gallery shouldn't join in the debate, but let's not dismiss the "peer-reviewed guys" on the basis of an unpublished critique.

Although of course if Bobk has published, then I'm happy to stand corrected.

 

[The Painter]

Are you guys still arguing about this? The same scientists have said it’s too late to do anything about it. Don’t worry about it. You can’t do anything to change it. It’s already over.

 

[mhaze]

No disrespect, rockoon, but peer review remains the best way of evaluating scientific research. It strikes me as improbable that the AGW skeptics' camp (or anyone else) has formulated a better approach.

I don't know Bobk, neither from here nor at Climate Audit, but if the methodological flaws that he has uncovered are real then they are publishable and I encourage him to do so. The arguments over the AGW hypothesis will be won, in the end, in the scholarly journals. That's not to say that we in the gallery shouldn't join in the debate, but let's not dismiss the "peer-reviewed guys" on the basis of an unpublished critique.

Although of course if Bobk has published, then I'm happy to stand corrected.

The threads in question at Climateaudit on hurricane intensity raised valid questions as to whether the facts show that hurricane intensity has intensified.

For example, here is one comment from CA (not Bobk) -

Re #44 One problem I have with HW is the quality of the older data. This is an old problem and covered in detail in the past at CA. It’s hard for me to build up much enthusiasm for the HW analysis when I’m bothered by the data on which it is founded.
To beat this horse once again, I want to add a new ocular exercise, with regards to holes in the data. This will take a minute because I have not consolidated these:
Glance at 1931 , 1932 , 1933 , 1934 , 1935 , 1936 , 1937 , 1938 , 1939 , 1940 , and on to 1945. I think the visual impression is that there are few storms east of 55W. What was happening between 55W and Africa? It’s like a void existed, with few exceptions.

Now, glance at 1995 , 1996 , 1997 , 1998 , 1999 , 2000 , 2001 , 2002 , 2003 , 2004 and 2005 .

The activity east of 55W is widespread.
I would say what has changed (today vs 1930s/40s) is data collection in these remote parts of the ocean, thanks to reconnaissance and especially satellite. In my opinion, some weaker storms in the east Atlantic were missed and some peak strengths were missed. HW may say “regime change” with hotter SST and more activity in the east Atlantic. I think it’s a data collection problem.

​

I believe that HW should refer to "Hurricane warming", or possibly Hurricane warmers, those who want to believe in hurricane warming.

 

[Pipirr]

The threads in question at Climateaudit on hurricane intensity raised valid questions as to whether the facts show that hurricane intensity has intensified.
{snip}
I believe that HW should refer to "Hurricane warming", or possibly Hurricane warmers, those who want to believe in hurricane warming.

I agree that there are valid questions, and I expect "hurricane warming" to be a difficult hypothesis to prove, given the limitations and extents of the available datasets. You and I probably share the same reservations about anyone stating emphatically that "HW" exists, and is responsible for Felix, Katrina etc.

Still, dismissing "the peer-review guys" on the basis of a blog discussion strikes me as hubris. It's easy to attack scientific research from the outside. It takes real chops to do it from within the realm of peer review.

 

[mhaze]

Note in these graphs from yet another Climateaudit thread, the clear cyclic nature of the phenomena.

• Do warmers that connect hurricanes to AGW talk about these cycles? No.

• Do warmers show graphs that starts at the low point of the current cycle (1970s) and ends at the current high? Yes.

Willis Eschenbach says:
August 23rd, 2006 at 6:30 pm
Let me add a couple other graphics to the site …






Piperr -
It is laughable to suggest that one can duck and dodge the direct presentation of facts by asking if they are peer reviewed, or to suggest that such facts should not be taken seriously until they are peer reviewed.

Alternately, if one followed your guidance on not believing facts until they were published, then we need to discount all of the opinions put forth into the media by scientists concerning hurricanes and the possible causes being AGW. Unless publishing in the Guardian, New York Times, or Scotsman qualify as peer reviewed. Publishing at Realclimate, then? Also not peer reviewed.

Direct questions that are asked, with supporting data, deserve direct answers. Correct understanding of science follows and is eventually published.

Published peer reviewed research without disclosure of datasets, methods and programs used is a major problem in climate science. Peer review cannot solve that problem. An amusing introduction to these issues is to read McIntyre's critique of Mann's Hockey Stick paper along with the source document.

 

[Pipirr]

Piperr -
It is laughable to suggest that one can duck and dodge the direct presentation of facts by asking if they are peer reviewed, or to suggest that such facts should not be taken seriously until they are peer reviewed.

Alternately, if one followed your guidance on not believing facts until they were published, then we need to discount all of the opinions put forth into the media by scientists concerning hurricanes and the possible causes being AGW. Unless publishing in the Guardian, New York Times, or Scotsman qualify as peer reviewed. Publishing at Realclimate, then? Also not peer reviewed.

Direct questions that are asked, with supporting data, deserve direct answers. Correct understanding of science follows and is eventually published.

Published peer reviewed research without disclosure of datasets, methods and programs used is a major problem in climate science. Peer review cannot solve that problem. An amusing introduction to these issues is to read McIntyre's critique of Mann's Hockey Stick paper along with the source document.

Duck and dodge? On the contrary, I'm not advocating peer reviewed research as the only place for discussion, nor would I say that there is no place outside it for debate and asking questions. What I take issue with are statements like these:

Originally Posted by rockoon
{snip}Most of the "peer reviewed" guys seem to make little or no effort to remove selection bias... that is why I giggle every time I see someone trumpet these studies... most people don't know how really lazy their methodology is and how completely inaccurate the study is because of it.

Peer reviewed research should not just be dismissed on the basis of a dissenting blogger. And if the dissent has real merit, then such dissent should be publishable. Our understanding of climate, hurricanes, global warming, will be better for it.

I expect far more climate scientists check in with the Web of Science on a regular basis than read the climate blogs.

Direct questions that are asked, with supporting data, deserve direct answers. Correct understanding of science follows and is eventually published.

That sounds fine to me. However, such questions do carry more weight when asked in peer reviewed journals. As the AGW skeptical community appears to be growing in number and capability, I hope that they will choose to engage the scientific community in more formal ways. Climate research will be all the more robust for it. And who knows, in a few years time Oreske's test could give quite different results...

 

[mhaze]

Duck and dodge? On the contrary, I'm not advocating peer reviewed research as the only place for discussion, nor would I say that there is no place outside it for debate and asking questions. What I take issue with are statements like these:

Peer reviewed research should not just be dismissed on the basis of a dissenting blogger. And if the dissent has real merit, then such dissent should be publishable. Our understanding of climate, hurricanes, global warming, will be better for it.

I may have misunderstood not your comment, but the extent to which you would have carried it.

I expect far more climate scientists check in with the Web of Science on a regular basis than read the climate blogs.

However, such questions do carry more weight when asked in peer reviewed journals. As the AGW skeptical community appears to be growing in number and capability, I hope that they will choose to engage the scientific community in more formal ways. Climate research will be all the more robust for it. And who knows, in a few years time Oreske's test could give quite different results...

It is worth noting that the discussions at Climateaudit and several others have a fair proportion of scientists (who are publishing in peer reviewed journals).

Oreske's "test" was highly biased. Either it has been debunked by the recent review of 528 published articles, or the opinions of scientists have changed in the 2003 - 2007 timeframe toward a more skeptical view.

 

[rockoon]

No disrespect, rockoon, but peer review remains the best way of evaluating scientific research. It strikes me as improbable that the AGW skeptics' camp (or anyone else) has formulated a better approach.

Hello Mr Strawman. You don't mind if I call you by your real name, do you?

I didnt say otherwise Mr Strawman.

But to be quite honest, these "peer reviewed" scientists typically do not have to abide by the standard of the journal they are publishing in. This isn't because the journals think their standards are wrong and are actively revising them, but that they themselves simply do not enforce it for whatever reason (I suggest economic.)

I don't know Bobk, neither from here nor at Climate Audit, but if the methodological flaws that he has uncovered are real then they are publishable and I encourage him to do so.

Mr Strawman, did I say that BobK uncovered methodological flaws?

I said that the papers on this subject are written by lazy people who make little or no effort to use good data.

If you have an example where a paper on the subject of the trend of hurricane intensity makes these efforts, and there are some, then you have found a rare paper.

Now, most papers on this subject do not even consider the whole record. That isnt even lazyness.. thats cherry picking.. I wish to thank you for giving me the opportunity to point that out.

The arguments over the AGW hypothesis will be won, in the end, in the scholarly journals.

Mr Strawman, they will be "won" on real data: past, present, and future.

Do you think it is a debate or something? This is science. It is only right when your hypothesis continualy makes accurate predictions that satisfy the data.

 

[Pipirr]

Hello Mr Strawman. You don't mind if I call you by your real name, do you?

Hi rockoon. My apologies if you think that I misrepresented your point of view. You may not have noticed, but I've been careful to avoid the rancour and name calling in the global warming threads. You'll forgive me, I hope, if I don't respond to you in kind.

In fairness to you, on reading your post again you weren't explicitly advocating dismissing the peer reviewed hurricane research. You did seem to suggest that in the majority of papers, the methods are flawed and the quality of the research poor. I think that begged the question of whether you are correct, and what can be done about it. Even if you were a climate scientist at the top of his game (maybe you are, I don't know), such a broad brush statement would give me pause.

As for the rest, I agree; the arguments will be won on real data. And I still would like to see the criticisms of methodology, which you highlighted, get into print.